


The Nonbeliever

by Slanguage



Series: Heaven's Grief [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Demon Dean Winchester, Demons, Hell, Knight of Hell, M/M, Mark of Cain, praying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-26 23:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1706906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slanguage/pseuds/Slanguage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester greeted death like an old friend.</p><p>He thought he was done. His debt should have been paid.</p><p>He had been reborn before, but this was different.</p><p>This wasn’t resurrection.</p><p>This was damnation.</p><p>Dean wasn’t the praying type, but there was only ever one angel that needed to hear him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nonbeliever

**Author's Note:**

> Both Moonclaimed and desmonds_constant offered inquiry as to if I would continue this saga, wherein I immediately answered no, listened to the right song on my iPod, read desmonds_constant’s response to my rejected sequel, got a spontaneous idea, and then decided “what the hell”. 
> 
> So, here we are. 
> 
> The title is based on a song I’ve never listened to called “No Church in the Wild”, but it has this phrase I’ve seen used on like a million Team Free Will gif- and picture-sets:
> 
> “Human beings in a mob. / What’s a mob to a king? / What’s a king to a god? / What’s a god to a nonbeliever?”
> 
> Enjoy! 
> 
> ~ I listened to Panic! At the Disco’s piano version of “This is Gospel” for this fic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO2_3pVd5k0), and I think it’s amazing accompaniment to the intended atmosphere, so check it out if you want to! ~

“You can’t let me out,” Dean managed to plead with Sam and Cas as he coughed up blood, feeling it running down his face like drool, but still he looked up with earnest eyes, his internalized desperation bubbling over the surface like molten lava cresting the precipice. “I—I don’t know what I could do, to you or to anybody else.”

“Okay,” Sam said uncertainly, stepping back and holding up his hands in surrender, but Cas didn’t move from where he was kneeling before Dean, staring at him determinedly, burning so bright that Dean almost couldn’t look at him. Even so, he couldn’t help but to think that maybe Cas was supposed to be burning even brighter—if maybe just standing around an angel’s glory would be enough to give a demon a decent suntan.

“Dean?” Cas asked again, sounding more scared than Dean had ever heard him, and the guilt and terror plunged cold in his stomach. What he must look like, how much he must have scared them, if that was the way Cas was looking at him.

Dean buried his face in his hands, trying to stop himself from shaking.

“I thought it would end when I died,” Dean admitted, letting his hands fall to smile bitterly at the only people left that mattered. “Maybe I should have checked, or listened to a goddamn rumor.”

“Who’s possessing you?” Sam demanded earnestly, determinedly, him against the world, and Dean’s heart would have shattered if it was still beating, if he was anything other than darkness powered by surging hellfire and the Mark on his arm, whispering murder and blood in his ear. If Dean was any more of a human, he would have been devastated to see Sam right now, but he wasn’t, and he barely felt a thing.

Dean murmured, “I am.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

_Alright, Cas._

_Hope you’ve got your ears on._

~*~*~*~*~*~

His last words as a human had been to his brother. They had been the words, “I’m proud of us.”

A lot of people who hadn’t known him had anticipated Dean’s greatest sin to be a lack of humility. They thought that Dean couldn’t accept the choices he made as being the wrong ones, but that had nothing to do with his sins. Dean had sinned many more times than his inability to accept to his wrongs. He had much greater sins. Being able to outwardly accept what he had done had only recently become an issue with the brand that laid burning on his skin, tainting his blood, turning him to a darkness unlike what he had ever known.

Dean had been in Hell. He had torn apart souls, and he had started to lose himself to this nature that he would now live the rest of his life. He had once faced the idea of life as a burning, wandering soul.

Dean had been made aware that lacking humility was one of his sins. It was until he had to ask for help that he realized it was one of his greatest.

When he felt his humanity draining out of him, when he began to wake into a world that Crowley had called his new life, Dean had taken a moment to reflect on those sins.

He thought about the people he had failed—his father, his brother, Bobby, Cas, a dozen more people and friends that had died because they had known him and fought with him, and he had let them die for him. All of them had died for _him_ , even if some of their deaths were temporary, and one of the things that Dean would never be able to forgive himself for was how he had allowed that to happen.

He could have stopped it. So many people had died just because he hadn’t been careful enough.

Dean had spent so many nights lying awake in the dark, listening to Sammy breathing next to him or listening to the hum of the air conditioning in the bunker, wondering why his father had died for him. John Winchester was a topic that Dean and Sam hadn’t discussed actively in years, not proving to be all too important with the revelation of Heaven, and the apocalypse, and all of the things that had fallen into place directly afterward. Still, to this day, Dean didn’t feel worthy of his father’s life. He didn’t feel worthy of anyone’s.

Dean had learned to distrust his father, even to hate him some days, but that didn’t change Dean’s perspective that he wasn’t worth it—especially not worth a life with a value so much greater than his own.

Other people were worth more than him. Dean had always known that as surely as he knew his own name, whether it was true or not. His low opinion of himself was as much of a fact of his own personal nature as his green eyes or his memories of his mother.

Dean had not been able to save Sam.

He had sold his soul for his brother, but that had caused him to turn to demon blood, and eventually the potential end of the world. Dean had given him life, had tried to save him—had given his _life_ for him—but Sam had still fallen down the rabbit hole, and it had ended in a crash landing with the words that had echoed in Dean’s head ever since— _“So?”_

When Sam had been looking death in the face and Dean had tried to save him from being a sacrifice, Sam hadn’t even blinked before offering his life for the cause. Sam didn’t hesitate before giving up.

Dean had failed him, and Sam had wanted to die.

He had allowed his brother to sicken, weaken, fade away. It had almost been worse than feeling Sam’s last breath leave him underneath of his own hands.

Dean had watched Bobby run from death, and then he had watched him die.

And then there was Cas.

Cas, who had given his life for Dean when they were barely even friends. Cas, who had taken on Sam’s hallucinations from guilt of what he had done. Cas, who had pushed Dean away in Purgatory and allowed him to save himself. Cas, who had been betrayed, who had been human, who had taken on the stolen grace of an angel to fight a war he hadn’t wanted anything to do with all for Dean.

Cas, who was dying again.

Dean had tried to stall Metatron for as long as he had been able, but something in him, the piece of his own self that had been clinging to the shadows, had heard that Cas was in danger, that Cas was not coming to save him, and what little hope he already had was shattered.

Normally, he would have thought that Cas failed them. Dean would have assumed that Cas hadn’t wanted to destroy the tablet, had wanted it for himself, or that Cas simply hadn’t been able to make it there on time, no matter what Metatron had told him, because a part of him hadn’t wanted to believe the asshole angel to begin with. But, for the first time, for the clearest moment in Dean’s entire life, Dean had finally not thought of Cas as having failed him. He thought of himself having failed Cas.

Cas had always given so much for him and his brother, and all Dean had done was push him away and distrust him. He had reasons, of course, he wouldn’t deny that, but he should have known better and, for once, he had. He had seen Cas not making it in time as less of a betrayal and a failure, and more like an acceptance that time has never been on his side.

Dean remembered long ago lying in a hospital bed and saying, _“And you need to learn how to manage a damn devil’s trap.”_

He had blamed Cas for so many things that weren’t even his fault. He had thrown Cas aside for doing what he thought was right and just. Dean had done nothing but terrible things to Cas, throwing him around like a fucking bully, and, like a victim, Cas had kept coming back anyway, eager to help, eager to redeem himself to Dean, even if Dean was the one that should have been saying Hail Marys to _him_.

Dean had been dying, and he had been more terrified at the thought of Cas having given his life for him one more time.

Maybe people’s priorities come to light when it’s too late to change them, the same way people who survive suicide attempts say that the regret hits them when it’s too late to turn back. Maybe all it took was an angel blade in Dean’s chest to realize what he always had and hadn’t even realized.

Dean had so many regrets.

He should have known Cas would be most of them.

~*~*~*~*~*~

_I’m not sure if you can still hear me. I know you’re still an angel, but you said yourself that your batteries are running on low. Don’t know what the hell you’re doing down here when Heaven’s probably shitting itself trying to figure out what way is up, but I—I’m glad you’re here, man._

_I guess you know as well as I do that it’s not exactly easy for me to ask for help._

_This is too much, Cas._

_This is what I’ve spent my entire life hating, killing. I would have done_ anything _not to become this. I thought that, by dying, I was doing us all a favor. I wouldn’t be slaughtering people left and right, and you and Sammy wouldn’t have to clean up my messes, and that everything would go back to normal once Metatron was stopped and Crowley had nothing to scheme._

_I thought I was going to save the world, I guess. I’m so obsessed with saving other people that I didn’t even think that there might have been a reason to save myself._

_I don’t even know if I have a soul anymore, Cas._

_Remember that time I told you that I wasn’t the man either of our dads wanted me to be?_

_Look at me now._

~*~*~*~*~*~

Cas _was_ looking.

Dean wasn’t sure what he saw.

He was too busy staring at Sam.

Sam admired Dean when they were kids. When they were growing up, Sam always saw right through him. He was smart and intuitive, and Dean always protected him from the world because Sam was just way too damn curious. Sam used to bring Dean to his recitals and all his afterschool clubs and events. He cared that Dean was in the audience, and Dean was so damn proud of the kid that he would never have refused him. When Sam was old enough to hunt, John used to take him with him when they split up, and the first thing that Sam would say to Dean once they met back up was if he was alright. Dean would never forget the look on Sam’s face when he was eighteen, his pack slung over his back as he got ready to walk out on his family for a bigger and better life, and he glanced over his shoulder in the doorway, and his devastated eyes were meant for Dean. Dean hadn’t been able to sleep for a year after Sam had left. But, still, he had been so proud of him, and he had wanted him to be safe and to succeed, so he had stayed away, and he had let Sam be who he needed to be.

Sam treated Dean like he was the world the same way that Dean’s world had revolved around the kid. Even when Sam had hurt him, and he had, so many times over, Dean had let Sam crawl right back under his skin the moment he seemed sorry, the moment he asked to come back. It was codependence, sure, but it was the only way Dean knew, and if caring for his little brother like a limb was considered strange, then Dean didn’t give a fuck.

Sam was practically Dean’s kid, even if he wasn’t a kid anymore. Dean would always feel responsible for him, even if he had recently taken to following the Prime Directive a little more closely—noninterference in civilizations and lives that didn’t need an outsider tampering with it—after having felt like the biggest asshole in the world for the dick move he pulled with Amelia. Sam was his responsibility, and Dean was his parent.

Like a parent, Dean wanted to hide Sam from this, to protect him from anything with the possibility of hurting him. He wanted to keep Sam safe from everything that made him get that expression on his face—that horror, that fear, that indecision, that exhaustion, that grief.

Sam had looked at Dean like he was many things before, but he had never looked at him like this.

Dean closed his eyes and hung his head again, still kneeling at the edge of the devil’s trap. For a moment, nothing in the air moved, Dean’s misery leaking into the silence like a toxin, poisoning everything around him—and then there were footsteps walking away, leaving the room behind, and Dean didn’t have to open his eyes to know that it was Sam, that he had fled, not knowing what to say, helpless to what he could possibly do.

Dean let him. He didn’t want to hold his brother back anymore.

“Sam,” Cas objected, but Dean couldn’t open his eyes to see if Cas had left him behind, too, couldn’t bare the thought of it if he had. If Cas had taken a look at the monster Dean had become and had walked away from all hopes of saving him, then Dean didn’t know how he would be able to resist the temptation to fall on the First Blade again and again until something stuck.

Cas had saved Dean so many times.

Why should he expect him to sacrifice even more time to save someone like Dean?

Dean opened his eyes, and Cas stared back at him.

He was still kneeling in the same spot, his eyes distressed, his shoulders tensed. He looked exhausted—the kind of tired that didn’t have anything to with how many hours a night he gets. His eyes were red-rimmed and stressed, and he was looking at Dean like he was expecting him to disappear at any given moment. Dean couldn’t look at him any longer and let his eyes slide shut again, hiding even the thought of his worst mistake, hoping that Cas would somehow be able to forget the way his eyes had flickered to reveal his true nature.

Cas had saved Dean when he had still believed him to be the righteous man. He wasn’t so righteous anymore.

“How about you?” Dean asked, not opening his eyes. “You gonna leave, too?”

The silence was heavy. It was so heavy and dragged on for so long that Dean was sure he was alone, that Cas had turned and walked away in that unnerving, soundless way that he had somehow mastered a long time ago, and Dean opened his eyes sporting a bitter smile, wondering if there would ever come a time that Sam or Cas would need him as much as he needed them.

Cas was sitting Indian-style on the ground only a few feet away, staring at Dean, his head tilted in confusion. Dean’s bitterness faded like smoke in the air, and his eyes widened, meeting Cas’s gaze, and Cas offered him a soft, understanding smile, looking at him like this was their unspoken promise.

“No,” Cas murmured, and they had nothing more to say.

~*~*~*~*~*~

_I didn’t think you believed in me._

_That’s probably the cheesiest thing I have ever said, and do not repeat that on pain of death, but—it’s true, Cas. You always left me, whether you died or you just disappeared without a trace. And, where there are some cases that I can’t exactly blame you for dying, since some of those times were because of me, it doesn’t change the fact that I was left alone to wander through the dark, wondering what I could have done differently._

_So many things have changed._

_I can feel my humanity draining away. I know that, with every day gone by, I’ll stop being me. I’ll become the same as the monsters I hunt. I’m becoming demonic, and I can feel the Mark burning, and I know it’s only a matter of time before I can’t cling to my own consciousness anymore._

_I’m not sure what I am going to become when I let go._

_I’m clinging, Cas, clinging onto me, but my hands are starting to slip._

_I don’t know who I am going to be when the demon takes over._

_I’m sorry that I couldn’t be more for you._

_I’m sorry that I can’t be human for you._

~*~*~*~*~*~

Cas sat silently with him until Sam came back.

“Sam,” Cas spoke first, but Dean didn’t even open his eyes. His skin felt like it didn’t fit him anymore and he didn’t want to have to look at Sammy knowing that his new demonic nature would show behind his eyes with the utterance of one single word. He felt vulnerable, real. He didn’t feel human.

Dean felt it leaving him. Felt the demon taking over like raw sandpaper rubbing against his skin, spreading slowly like a disease, but it was a cancer, and there was no cure. There was no treatment. He was terminal, and the human part of him still holding on wanted nothing more to save Sam from having to see this.

The moment the humanity left Dean’s body, he would be lost. He had already let his brother see him die once.

“You should have kept walking, Sammy,” Dean whispered into the tense air, his voice low and measured and sounding wrong even in his own ears, as he opened his eyes and looked at a steely eyes of his little brother that had once stood in a burning field, cheering as fireworks lit up the night. “You should have left me down here to rot.”

“Shut the fuck up, Dean,” Sam said easily, and then to Cas, “Would Metatron be able to help?”

“Metatron is no better than any other angel now that the tablet has been destroyed. He would not be able to help,” Cas announced, “and he will not want to. This is out of Heaven’s hands.”

“Heaven doesn’t want to help someone like me,” Dean told Sam, his mouth twisting into a sinister smile that was almost uncomfortable to wear. It didn’t feel right. And yet, it felt like he would know nothing else.

“Dean,” Sam said, turning to look at him straight on, and Dean saw more hellfire in his little brother’s eyes than he felt corrupting his soul. “I am not going to let you throw yourself onto the coals for this, do you hear me? We’ve been played, and I want you to tell me everything that happened from the second you woke up to when you ended up here, or I swear to whoever is listening, I will march into Heaven myself and stab that asshole in the throat, or I will crawl into Hell and force that dick to tell me the truth. I will not let you lie down and let yourself become this just because you think that you deserve it, Dean, the same way you accept everything bad that happens to you. We are all in this. We all have everything to lose. You hear me?”

Dean heard him. He heard him loud and clear. But there were just some things that Dean wasn’t ready to hear.

“No, Sam,” Dean murmured, looking at his brother as desperately as he dared. “I won’t let you get involved in this, you got that? I didn’t come here for you to throw yourself into the middle of the fight that we ain’t got the juice to fight. We’re burning out, Sam. This isn’t our fight anymore.”

“So whose is it?” Sam demanded, eyes defiant, and Sam stood up even straighter, towering over Dean. Dean looked up at his brother, and wondered how he had done so much right with him. “Crowley’s? Heaven’s? Cas’s?”

“It’s not Cas’s fight either,” Dean growled, sudden emotion burning through him, like the last hope of the dying. “Cas is _dying_ —you guys gotta figure out a way to save him way before you try whatever stupid idea you’re gonna have to save me, got it? I can’t fight this, Sam, it’s _over_. There’s no turning around. There is _nothing_ you can do to help me.”

“I’m not giving up on you,” Sam announced.

He didn’t say it like he was obligated. He didn’t say it like it was a lie. Sam wasn’t desperate, and he wasn’t brave, and Sam didn’t look at Dean like he was pitying or afraid of him. He was looking at Dean the same way he had stared at him every time he had asked for him to go to a parent-teacher conference, or to the performance of one of his plays or recitals. Sam had looked at him with that same look when Dean had taken him out for ice cream when Dad hadn’t come home or when he had taken him on long drives to get him to fall asleep and Sam had looked over at him and grinned and—

Humanity felt like such a long ways away.

Dean was looking through the eyes of his younger self, and he had nothing to say. Even his memories had morphed under the poison of a demon’s touch, the darkness on his soul overtaking all of the good Cas once swore that he had seen in him.

“Tell me what happened,” Sam whispered, and Dean looked away, staring at the line he can no longer cross, trying to ignore the feeling of Cas’s eyes on his skin, like he was desperately trying to urge Dean to heal, but even Cas couldn’t manage that kind of miracle anymore.

“I’ll tell you everything, Sammy,” Dean murmured helplessly, “but you won’t want to help me out after I get done talking.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Sam replied fiercely.

Dean glanced at Cas, the final anchor keeping him from drifting out to sea, and he began.

~*~*~*~*~

_Sam’s not gonna give up on me. I want him to._

_I think all of us have been self-sacrificial over the years, so I’m not going to pretend like we don’t know what it’s like to have this conversation. I won’t pretend like neither of us knows what it’s like to talk the other from the edge of a cliff._

_This isn’t the same as it ever was. I don’t think you’ll ever argue about that._

_I don’t know if you can hear me anymore, but I hope you can._

_It sure makes dying easier when you don’t have to be alone._

~*~*~*~*~

“Crowley,” Sam growled, his hands clenching.

“He kept telling me he hadn’t lied,” Dean explained, barely managing to not roll his eyes, feeling too exhausted to put in the effort to be sarcastic, “but that little bedtime story sounds like one hell of an omission to me.”

“Dean, do you know what this means?” Sam demanded, pacing a little now, turning and moving in different directions like he was helpless of where to turn. “You’re not just a killing machine—you’re _the_ killing machine. Crowley’s turned you into more of a demon—you’re like Abaddon now. You’re a _knight_.”

“Sam,” Dean began, unsure.

“If you get the Blade,” Sam continued, “you’ll be unstoppable.”

“I don’t wanna be unstoppable,” Dean interrupted him, quiet but somehow managing to overpower him, his voice filling all the corners of the room. “Sam, I already don’t know what I’m capable of—the Mark changes the game rules on this demon thing, and I was losing control already when I was _human._ I don’t want to gamble on this anymore. I’m done.”

Dean sounded so tired to even his own ears. Cas’s face fell.

Sam was quiet for a long moment, taking the time to shut his eyes and take a breath, before he looked at Dean again, his eyes worn. Sam didn’t have to say anything. Dean knew what he was trying to say just by the way he was looking at him.

Sam wasn’t giving up on him yet.

He guessed it would have to take more than this situation for the most stubborn Winchester to walk this earth to admit defeat.

He was almost proud.

~*~*~*~*~

_I left so many things unsaid._

_I wish I could say them now._

_I kinda think it’s a little too late._

~*~*~*~*~

It took another hour and a half, but Cas eventually convinced Sam to put the books down, to put down his plans, and to sleep for a few hours. Sam had been determined to avoid the chore at first, determined to power on, but Cas put a hand on his shoulder and spoke to him in a low voice, Dean watching them from the door to the dungeon, and Sam had taken one long stare at Dean before nodding and retreating from the room. Dean and Cas listened to him walk away until the sound of his footsteps disappeared. When they had, Cas returned to sit by Dean, his hands patiently curled in front of him, a pleasant but sad smile on his face.

“Sam won’t ever give up on you,” Cas informed him like it was a secret.

“I know,” Dean said fondly, and he thought he might have smiled a bit.

“You’re changing,” Cas said, not bothering to sidestep around the conversation, not trying to be subtle or to plant hints. He was looking at Dean, right in the eye, but it was as if he was seeing through him. Dean realized with a sharp turn of his stomach that Cas could see the demon under his skin.

“I can’t hold on forever, Cas,” Dean murmured shamefully. “It’s—it’s terrible, like I’m locked inside a burning building, like—kinda like I’m burning like my mom, you know? Only I’m not dying, not if you asked Crowley. I guess he’s right, since I’m pretty much all the way dead, but not quite.”

“We’ll find a way to save you,” Cas promised him.

“And if you can’t?” Dean looked up into bright blue eyes, and he tried not to think about how much he would miss them in the scheme of forever. “Will you still try to help me, to save me, if you can’t figure something good out in time?”

This time, Cas answered, “Yes,” and Dean wanted nothing more for the first time tonight that he could cross out of this circle.

~*~*~*~*~

_I haven’t really said this to anyone in a long time, so here it goes._

_I love you, Cas._

_I’m scared. I’m terrified of what’s going to happen in the next few days, and I guess I didn’t want to die a second time without having said it out loud. I figured, if I did say it to you after I had lost control, in an attempt to hurt you or manipulate you or something, I didn’t want that to be the first and last time you heard them, you know? You deserved better than that, after all of the shit I put you through. Everyone deserves better than me._

_But you know what, Cas? I’m selfish. I’m a selfish asshole. And I want you for myself._

_I’ve known it for a long time now._

_If by some goddamn miracle we make it out of here, I wanted you to know that._

_You, and Sam, are the two people in the world that means the most to me. I would do anything for either of you. You’re the only two people I have ever cared about, and Sam is my brother, but Cas—you never had to stay at my side. You didn’t have to believe in me. But here you are, sitting in front of me, and you’re just_ looking _at me and it’s making a demon pray._

_There are a thousand things I wanted to say to you, but that’s the only thing that matters to me right now._

_I love you._

_Cas,_

_can you hear me?_

~*~*~*~*~

Across the trap’s line, a bright grin slowly slid over his face, and Cas’s eyes lit up with light brighter than the glory of an archangel. Dean felt his own lips tilt up in a small, shy, silent agreement.

~*~*~*~*~

_You’ve always believed in me, Cas._

_I believe in you, too._

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!
> 
> xo Slang


End file.
